Quotes of the day

posted at 8:31 pm on October 26, 2013 by Allahpundit

Whereas the old game of attacking even very conservative Republicans as sellouts was something of a direct-mail fundraising racket, the new cause is more like a real movement.

And that’s why this time the infighting might lead to real war. For starters, the populists are much better funded and organized. Despite liberal doomsaying that Citizens United would give corporations a stranglehold over politics, we’ve seen the influence of big business decline in the GOP as new populist PACs have declared war on what they believe is the K Street wing of the party.

Also, public sentiment is much more on their side than you might guess from media coverage of the Tea Party. As political scientist Larry Bartels recently observed, the public is “more conservative than at any time since 1952.” That new progressive era liberals promised in 2008? It never happened. The public has grown more conservative during the Obama presidency. The catch: It’s grown less Republican, too.

***

On the day the government shutdown began, J.D. Winteregg, a high school French teacher and founder of a group called The Ohio Accountability Project, announced a primary run against Boehner. The campaign will, at the very least, give a place for grassroots Republicans to vent their outrage against the GOP leadership while waiting for polls to open.

In an interview, Winteregg said his campaign sends a message “that no one is safe.”

***

At every campaign stop, [Lamar] Alexander offers a parable about the future of the Republican Party based on the tale of two famous Tennesseans who went to battle in Texas almost 175 years ago — Davy Crockett and Sam Houston. It is a story about defiance and defeat vs. pragmatism and victory.

Too many of today’s congressional Republicans, Alexander says, are like Crockett, who fought to the death and lost at the Alamo. For his part, Alexander explains, he’d rather be like Houston, who made his stand on the more favorable terrain of San Jacinto.

“He withdrew to a better place — he got some criticism for that — he showed some patience. But then he defeated Santa Anna and won the independence of Texas,” Alexander said, as nearly 100 heads nodded at the Gibson County Farm Bureau meeting last month…

When it comes to Tennessee’s favorite sons, Carr doesn’t flinch. Crockett and his brigade made victory possible for Houston, serving as an inspiration that propelled them to victory — something that today’s political system needs. “Some men may have to give up their political lives for the sake of our country, and, I think, some men and women may be able to carry on, but at the end of the day, it’s the principles, the values that made this country great as embodied by Tennessee and Texas that need to be carried forward,” Carr said.

***

In Cruz, conservatives have found something better than a champion for their cause or a defender of their values. They’ve found a martyr.

Indeed, since the government shutdown, establishment Republicans have done little to conceal their frustration with Cruz and the “kamikaze caucus,” who have fielded pointed criticism from the likes of Sens. John McCain, Lindsey Graham, and Orrin Hatch. But in the eyes of the Tea Party, the onslaught has only made Cruz seem more heroic.

“Every time one of these guys attacks him, it’s good for him,” said one Iowa Republican operative. “He’s like a superhero. The more bullets that get shot at him, the bigger and stronger he gets.”…

The establishment usually scorns the populist as a dummy, full of overheated rhetoric for the masses but not much more. When the smarty-pants set attacked Cruz for his Obamacare grandstanding, it looked like a familiar script. The elites thought it was dumb, but “real Americans,” thought Cruz was a hero, said former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay. Mike Gallagher, the conservative talk radio host, said in an interview with Cruz, “You’re not getting the credit you deserve from the intelligentsia, but you sure are from the American people.”

But Cruz wasn’t being mocked for low wattage the way Palin and Reagan had been. Cruz was being singled out for a lack of common sense born of his rarefied résumé. He graduated cum laude from Princeton and magna cum laude from Harvard Law School. He clerked for Chief Justice William Rehnquist, practiced law, and worked in government, avoiding the practical world of business. Even his wife—a Goldman Sachs investment banker and vegetarian—seems at odds with Cruz’s image as the tribune of the silent majority…

“The bottom line,” Steele continues, “is that when a vacuum is created in leadership, something or someone is going to fill it. And because there was no strategic plan going into this fight, and there was no idea of what we should do on the other end to come out of it, Ted Cruz filled it.”

The former Republican Party chairman adds: “For voices like Joe Scarborough and [New Jersey Gov.] Chris Christie and Michael Steele, it’s kind of like being in a wind tunnel. I’ve given up talking to this intelligentsia inside the Beltway because they don’t get it. I rely on the folks outside the Beltway to send a message at the ballot box or, as we’ve seen, in polls, and impress upon the members their responsibilities to get this Congress off their ass and to do their jobs.”

***

Throughout my family’s more than 170-year legacy of public service, Republicans have represented the voice of fiscal conservatism. Republicans have been the adults in the room. Yet somehow the current generation of party activists has managed to do what no previous Republicans have been able to do — position the Democratic Party as the agents of fiscal responsibility…

There is more than a passing similarity between Joseph McCarthy and Ted Cruz, between McCarthyism and the Tea Party movement. The Republican Party survived McCarthyism because, ultimately, its excesses caused it to burn out. And eventually party elders in the mold of my grandfather were able to realign the party with its brand promise: The Republican Party is (or should be) the Stewardship Party. The Republican brand is (or should be) about responsible behavior. The Republican party is (or should be) at long last, about decency.

What a long way we have yet to go.

***

At a Senate Republican lunch the day of the vote, someone mentioned that the party wasn’t ready to run the Senate: If Republicans had held a majority in both the House and the Senate, they wouldn’t have been able to pass anything in either chamber. The senator thinks such a turn of events would have been “incredibly damaging.”

He heard a similar sentiment from the other chamber of Congress: House Republicans from his state have told him how much happier some of their colleagues would be if they were in the minority and could just lob spitballs at the Democrats. “We have to really think how we become the governing party,” he says.

***

[E]ver since [Tim] Scott was appointed to the Senate 10 months ago, he’s also made it clear he knows how to stay out of the limelight—which was not necessarily how it had to be. He sits in the old seat of former Sen. and tea-party godfather Jim DeMint and has been cited by Sen. Ted Cruz as part of the “new generation of great leaders” in the upper chamber. And although his ideological stances are in line with those of the junior senator from Texas, Scott still comes across as the anti-Cruz.

“Figuring out how to fix the system takes a different approach than just learning how to burn it down,” Scott said in an interview. “That may just get you a fire.”

Scott has walked a delicate line between the tea-party firebrand he was in the House and the unseen-and-unheard role that freshman senators have traditionally assumed. Yes, Scott would like to see Obamacare defunded, but you didn’t hear him saying so as part of Cruz’s 21-hour filibuster-like attack. He voted against the recent deal to fund the government and raise the debt ceiling. But unlike some of his conservative colleagues, he also voted to at least move the measure to the Senate floor.

“I can get a lot of press by jumping on TV for issues that inflame the electorate, but I’m really looking at how we create the country for the 22nd century, not just for now,” he said. Scott is playing the long game: meeting with senators on both sides of the aisle on issues he’d like to tackle down the road and learning the process, knowing that both efforts will pay off when it comes time to write legislation. Cruz might be more famous, but it will probably be a while before anything he writes sees time on the Senate docket.

***

Just about every GOP candidate with aspirations to [Texas] statewide office in 2014 seems to be styling himself or herself after Cruz. In tight formation, they are moving hard to the right and looking for the next big populist rallying cry — secession, rolling back the state’s liberal immigration laws, impeaching President Obama, amending the Constitution to end the direct election of U.S. senators…

“Cruz was a once-in-a-generation kind of candidate. A lot of people are trying to re-create that magic,” said GOP strategist Matt Mackowiak. “Three or four years ago, the model you wanted to follow if you were a Texas politician was Rick Perry.” Perry, the Republican governor of Texas since 2000, has called the idea of shutting down the federal government to stop the health-care law “nonsensical.”…

Cruz is “the new model, and I think it’s probably going to be the last model, because it will lead us right into the demographic changes that are occurring and will not serve us well as Texas becomes a purple state,” said veteran Republican political consultant John Weaver.

“There’s no way that playing to the angry crowd is a sustainable path,” added a Republican state legislator, who did not want to be quoted criticizing his party’s biggest rising star. “If [the Cruz forces] misplay it and continue to run into the ditch, then we will hand it to the Democrats.”

***

Long after we are dead, pundits and political reporters will still talk about the Rockefeller Republicans vs. the Conservatives and other such archaic divisions that no longer exist except in the rhetorical habits of pretentious political reporters. The real division within the Republican Party now isn’t even between those who call themselves tea partiers fighting the establishment. “Tea party”, like “conservative” and “Republican”, has less meaning these days and I increasingly dislike using the word. Admittedly though, everyone would consider me one based on the general parameters of what the tea party is.

In any event, the real fight within the Republican Party now is between those who believe we actually are at the moment of crisis — existential or otherwise — and thereby must fight as we’ve never fought before and those who think the GOP can bide its time and make things right.

Cruz is “the new model, and I think it’s probably going to be the last model, because it will lead us right into the demographic changes that are occurring… as Texas becomes a purple state,” said veteran Republican political consultant John Weaver.

How cow, and CO becomes solid blue, and across the land all the other states become bluer or purpler, and CA goes so far that it does a complete 360 and deep blue becomes… red. Yes, but it’s communist red, as the new 50%+ super majorities of low income immigrants shock their ex-partners, the wealthy liberals, and call for outright confiscation of property and $ (or a hefty annual Wealth Tax to make it look official) so these assets can be in effect transferred to the new immigrant majority.

Is Paul Ryan still pushing amnesty??

Wake up Republicans. Do whatever it takes to stop Paul Ryan and his amnesty cohorts!

Looks like the Obamas are paying off their buddies with our tax dollars. No bid contract for ObamaCare Web site went to Moochelle’s classmate.

SparkPlug on October 26, 2013 at 9:59 PM

One of these days, someone is going to wake up and ask where all the stimulus money and other funds went. Billions upon billions of dollars are unaccounted for since the grifters took over the White House and nobody seems to care. Wasn’t Joe Biden supposed to be responsible for tracking and making public where the TARP money or stimulus money went?

By the way, where IS Big Mooch? Has anyone seen or heard from her since the shutdown?
Mark my words, someone forgot to let her out of the White House food locker after a feeding.
When they find her, they’re going to have to knock out a wall just to squeeze her a$$ through.

Just like Upton, the light bulb guy, on the wrong side. So when some anonymous coward of an R talks about Tx turning purple if people like Cruz get elected…I say so?

it has come to that. If the GOPe is just a faint echo of the hard left, a center-left party…then so be it.

i’m sure that most Rs are either bought or have so much dirt in their background that they are compromised. Or maybe they are just losers that want to run the crony train for a while.

Like so many U.S. states in the last decade, Ohio’s legislature was successfully lobbied by crony capitalists and environmental radicals to impose a back-door tax on consumers via government mandates on renewable energy and energy efficiency. State Republicans in the legislature overwhelmingly supported these measures that, in the end, will hurt coal power generation in Ohio more than coal-related regulations from President Obama and his Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). GOP State Senator Bill Seitz seeks to address some of the insanity perpetrated by the previous state legislature via Senate Bill 58, but opposition from within the Republican Party to reform remains formidable. Although we support a full repeal of these market distortions created by the state government in order to protect all consumers, including the poor and elderly who survive on a fixed income, we believe that Senator Seitz is moving the discussion in the right direction. Accordingly, his GOP colleagues should support his endeavor.

Looks like the Obamas are paying off their buddies with our tax dollars. No bid contract for ObamaCare Web site went to Moochelle’s classmate.

SparkPlug on October 26, 2013 at 9:59 PM

One of these days, someone is going to wake up and ask where all the stimulus money and other funds went. Billions upon billions of dollars are unaccounted for since the grifters took over the White House and nobody seems to care. Wasn’t Joe Biden supposed to be responsible for tracking and making public where the TARP money or stimulus money went?

By the way, where IS Big Mooch? Has anyone seen or heard from her since the shutdown?
Mark my words, someone forgot to let her out of the White House food locker after a feeding.
When they find her, they’re going to have to knock out a wall just to squeeze her a$$ through.

justltl on October 27, 2013 at 12:54 AM

Hi folks

I’m seeing reports that not only is CGI run by Michelle’s former classmate, but that Valerie Jarret’s daughter and son-in-law are employed by CGI. The son-in-law appears to be the son of a Canadian MP. I’m laying odds they are both making inflated salaries.

Affirmative-action incompetents bleed two different governments of millions of taxpayer dollars by the simple expedient of exploiting political connections and every form of kickback ever conceived, financial and political.

We should have never joined the Union, just stayed a Republic, a separate nation. With a far better ability to advance liberty from without, rather than from within. Sam Houston, our first President, was completely incompetent when it came to foreign policy, understandably given his limited background in this area. We should never have joined the Union.

I’m seeing reports that not only is CGI run by Michelle’s former classmate, but that Valerie Jarret’s daughter and son-in-law are employed by CGI. The son-in-law appears to be the son of a Canadian MP. I’m laying odds they are both making inflated salaries

While most of us are angry and frustrated, the vast majority of conservatives understand that you don’t win by losing, period. And in the end, only a few will be true “insurgents” or defectors. Yes, they are loud. So was ACORN, for a time.

And the notion that “more Americans than ever since 1952 are conservative” is a joke. In 1952 and even 1964 most of the liberal Democrats were at least as “conservative” as most of those claiming the label today. Sure, a 41% plurality of Americans self-identify as conservatives today, but it is misleading. Ask the same group if they would favor even small reductions in benefits to save Social Security and Medicare, and a majority says NO. That ain’t conservative, sweetums.

And you wish me to believe so many Americans are conservative, yet we reelected Obama? Doesn’t pass the laugh test. It’s a fantasy.

I watched the special on Charles Krauthammer this morning, (with Bret Baier)

The interview with Dr. Krauthammer was a great/inspiring life story about overcoming a tragic freak accident, and not really missing a beat in charging ahead with life’s challenges. His story only solidifies my admiration for the man, (and his transition from a staunch liberal to a fairly right-wing Conservative). And, it would be ungenerous to not mention his latest book being released: Things That Matter: Three Decades of Passions, Pastimes and Politics

However…………..,

I still have one argument with Dr. Krauthammer’s assessment/supposition of the ObamaCare debate. Krauthammer asserts that the “maneuver” by the Conservative right, (specifically Ted Cruz, and mostly Tea Party Republicans)—to completely defund ObamaCare—was a flawed strategy. But his argument is based on the fact that the program had no chance of being defunded with only one legislative branch controlled by Republicans. All true. But here’s my rebuttal to Mr. Krauthammer:

McCain was the savior
Perry was the savior
Steele was the savior
Cain was the savior
Santorum was the savior
Romney was the savior
Huckabee was the savior
Rand Paul was the savior
Rubio was the savior
Cruz is the savior

Naw, sorry-had enough. I’m now a RINO, that is, I’m a registered Republican but at this point I don’t think I’m voting for these criminals any more. Tired of getting my hopes up only to be sold out to the Communists and their big business (temporary) allies.

And you wish me to believe so many Americans are conservative, yet we reelected Obama? Doesn’t pass the laugh test. It’s a fantasy.

Adjoran on October 27, 2013 at 2:24 AM

the apparent contradiction is easily solved. Money. On the take. Buying the Vote. Alexander GOPe from Tn talked to the Farm people about the right wing noise machine. But vote for me and uncle sugars money will keep on coming

repeat X times and you too can be a senator. So the deal is…do i trust the government? hell no. Do i like other people’s money…please send the check..i need the checks

“I can get a lot of press by jumping on TV for issues that inflame the electorate, but I’m really looking at how we create the country for the 22nd century, not just for now,” he said. Scott is playing the long game: meeting with senators on both sides of the aisle on issues he’d like to tackle down the road and learning the process, knowing that both efforts will pay off when it comes time to write legislation. Cruz might be more famous, but it will probably be a while before anything he writes sees time on the Senate docket.

Well, Sen. Scott, to get to the 22nd century we must survive the 21st as a Nation.

How are you going to fix SSA? It is a Ponzi Scheme and in the red now, eating into current revenue beyond what it takes in. Gots a solution for that?

Ditto the M&Ms, they are even worse off than SSA, but the Democrats have demonstrated you can cut into them and not get burned to a crispy. So what is your plan for those? The federal government is in the red on them and its getting worse, not better, due to demographics.

We are missing close to two generations of skilled labor in the Nation: welders, brick layers, stone masons, pipefitters, plumbers, electricians. We need people, desperately, to fill these jobs which are going begging. Mike Rowe is doing his part to try and get people to understand that a good trade leads to a good life and decent pay from the start. He isn’t waiting for YOU to fix this but needs your help in getting rid of the federal part of the PROBLEM of funding higher education and pushing people into it when what we need are individuals skilled in the tradecrafts. Without these people you do not GET TO THE 22ND CENTURY as a Nation or a civilization.

So, Sen. Scott, why are we paying good money in the red to vast Progressive projects that are draining money away from our pocket books and funding a system that is not sustainable because it can’t maintain the infrastructure that is necessary to get through THIS CENTURY? You know, the current one? The one of the US in debt past its eyeballs and quickly going over its head. This one, here. The SPENDTHRIFT ONE. How about STOPPING THE SPENDING?

Easing the system out requires decent work, yes, but if you don’t do that very, very, very soon then these little things will disappear in a puff of smoke along with our ability as a Nation to pay our debts because no one will trust us on spending. You won’t have SSA, the M&Ms, and money going to universities because no one will finance it for us any more. Then deficit spending faces the hard reality of spend what you take in… and if Obama has his way that will only finance our current debt. There will be nothing left over for essentials like the military, USPTO, or even enforcing the laws on the books because we can’t afford to do that any more. So while I appreciate the candor and all, and love the long-sighted view, the problem is this massive abyss at our feet that you seem to want to figure out how to put a few shovelfuls in while, what it needs, is to STOP BEING DUG IN THE FIRST PLACE, because what you try to shovel back in will come right back out again. Stop the spending, stop the artificial inflation of higher education (indeed ALL EDUCATION), and wean people off the idea that there is a ‘retirement age’ and that government can get you price breaks by law on medical treatments and medications. It doesn’t work. You want to fix this? Fine! Just outline how you are going to do it… and quickly… because LIB is becoming the default for those wanting to ‘fix things’ and sitting on their butts and just talking about it.

We can survive with a National government burnt down to is foundations. I’m fine with that as the foundations are sound. If you can fix the house of cards, do so, because there are some being removed at various levels even as we speak and that speaks ill of the fortune of the house itself… but the foundations can easily survive that if we but remember them.

Crockett and his brigade made victory possible for Houston, serving as an inspiration that propelled them to victory

What poppycock! The fighters at the Alamo made victory possible for Houston by delaying Santa Ana’s forces long enough for Houston to gather his at San Jacinto.

While I disagree with the Cruz=Crockett/GOPe=Houston analogy, for the sake of argument I would say that, like Crockett, Cruz will enable the GOP to get something done. Now, if only they were willing to do it.

Yeah, I agree. And that includes voting for evil even while pretending that you’re not. At some point you have to quit being a sucker.

Dr. ZhivBlago on October 27, 2013 at 3:19 AM

…..rationalizing refusal to choose – or rationalizing a choice that helps those who Openly State Their Intentions to Perform Evil (“They can build plants to make energy – we’ll just bankrupt them1”) IS the act of doing evil.

That rationalization – like certain feces – won’t float, and no one is buying it.

“All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.”